Monthly Archive for January, 2007

Dog’s world

Published on January 28, 2007 in humanity, Just for Jolly and life. 3 Comments

Yesterday morning, on my way to home from office after a good week of night shift, I hit a dog while riding my bicycle and fell down. I took the cycle from the cycle stand and after a couple of turns there was a dog who was ferociously barking after something and did not notice me. I did all my best to apply the brakes but my cycle did not halt and hit him in the stomach. He was thrown a few yards away. And there he stood up barking ferociously again. This time his subject of attraction was I. All this long, I was there down with my hands filled with mud and my jeans drenched up a bit with the stagnated water in the near by pot-hole. My butterfly type handle bar in the cycle changed to a new figure which I cannot comprehend with my little knowledge in geometry. Whatever the dog thought, he went away barking for a few seconds and did not bite me. There is a Ayyappan temple near by and an adjacent flower shop.The lady and the man, I assume them to be the owners of the flower shop, helped me wash the pant and my hands with the hand pump. The man went ahead to say that I was lucky enough that the dog did not bite me and also I might have escaped a big accident. He showed the temple and went on saying that Ayyappan saved me. I did not disappoint him saying that I don’t believe in God or religion and instead thanked him for the gratitude and expressed how I felt bad for the dog.

On normal circumstances, I would have cursed the dog, pelted stones or cursed the government for the poor road conditions. But this time, I really felt bad for the dog . The first thing I asked mom when I reached home was “Does it pain for dogs when they are hit by vehicles? I have seen them whining away and not showing any pains after a while.” She gave me a glare and might have thought that I got a few screws loosened after this small accident withstanding the cycle.

Me : What happened in me that makes me to feel for the dog?

My Alter-ego : singing the Padayappa song,

நேற்று வரைக்கும் மனிதனப்பா , இன்று முதல் நீ புனிதனப்பா

Translation

You were a human being till yesterday

Today on, you are What a man!

Me : grrrrrrhh!

P.S. :- Umesh writing about dog and I quoting the song and line from the movie Padayappa consecutively for the second time in a week is all co-incidence.

What a man!

Published on January 23, 2007 in Humor, Just for Jolly and people. 7 Comments

Sajeesh is my colleague and a avid movie fan like me. He is such a lively character that he makes one laugh with the jokes and one liners drawn from the films. Name a thing, he will have a joke or a scene from the movies substantiating it.
Recent one we use is the one liner What a man! from Padayappa. If you watched Padayappa, this one particular scene never goes unnoticed without laughing where Abbass quips in with this line when Rajnikanth shows his physique. If you ask Sajeesh about it, he will say that the Abbas never had the line to say in the original script and when the camera turned towards him for the shot, he blurted out this line spontaneously and the director left it along while editing. Sajeesh also goes on to explain that the director left it alone because he did not want to trouble Rajni with a retake. A funny explanation.

Now if someone does a simple thing or a gesture, he turns towards me and says What a man! .

P.S. :- This post is intended for pun and to be taken in a lighter sense.

Proud to be a Chemical Engineer

Published on January 21, 2007 in Just for Jolly, life and people. 9 Comments

Going down the memory lane to see what I did at college makes me laugh, smile and cry. I started our journey with dreams of becoming a Chemical engineer and make it big in the Gulf. There seemed to seven other guys with similar dreams joining the journey with me. As every journey has its own twists and turns, ours too had many. Did we complete the journey? What happened after the journey?

Here it is…..

1. I was proud to be a part of a gang of chemical engineers (8 of us) and we called the gang the Royal Chemical Ruffians . I still don’t remember who coined up this name. But in a way, it was really fun and cool. (Looking back at the words cool and uncool now, makes me laugh ).

2. The first thing we did in the first day of every academic year was to carve this beautiful gang name in the benches we occupied. We thought that we were always privileged to occupy the last benches and as no one dared to question us. But the truth was that no one in the class never bothered about the last bench.

3. We used to pee on all the walls we found in and around college campus. There was a silly Atlas competition while peeing. The competition was to draw maps of all continents and countries on the walls (while peeing) and rating whose map was the best.

4. We used to love the same girl and there was a unsaid agreement that the others will leave if any one of us gets going with the girl. The second thing never happened (I thought Cupid loved Chemistry and chemical engineers) and we vowed to concentrate hard in studies.

5. All our study holidays were filled with sessions of playing The Rummy , the most popular card game of our times. On the day of the exam, one among us who had studied for couple of hours straight together (!@$#%%) became the hero and made the rest believe that exams can be cleared if we studied what he said.

6. On the day of results, one who cleared all the subjects becomes the villain of the gang. He becomes friends with others after spending Rs.20 for Tea, Bajji, Samosa, Cigarettes in the adjacent tea shop in the name of Treat .

7. Unsaid rules
a. Bunk the class as a bunch.
b. No one does the assignment or submits the lab records in time.
c. No one clears a paper which others have failed to clear.
d. Everyone watches the movie together.

If someone evades these rules, he becomes a traitor and needs to buy others a Treat to become friends again.

8. We laughed for all little gestures and cracked jokes to disturb the class. If someone outside the group cracked a joke, we looked at each other and decided whether to laugh or not.

9. All our economics classes were filled with last bench sessions on how to go to Dubai and become a millionaire. We thought every chemical engineer in the planet will land up in Dubai by default. No one ever told us about the grades though.

10. The lab sessions were filled with Dumbcharades and Antaksharis. We used to mingle around with others in the class as these games needed more people. We were always the winners as we were up to date with all the old and new movies, songs etc; The fruits or the pazhams (the ones who study well in the class) used to wonder on the knowledge we possessed on the movies and songs. !!@#$!!

11. We made a point to be present on all college Annual days with balloons tied in heads, playing drums, whistle etc; All in our gang were good at Dappankuththu and one was really good at playing oththai adi with drums. None of us took liquor during Annual day as the college management used to take strict actions agains students who did that. Instead, we enjoyed much by dancing in front of all the lecturers and cornering them on the labs and respective departments. We always knew that this will have a great impact on our lab and project work grades. But we never bothered to care much about those as bothering much was uncool.

12. Never cared about exams till they arrived and never had exam fears as one needs to go through a dozen exams per semester to get a engineering degree. All our weekly cycle test notebooks were empty all the time as we thought it was uncool to take up those weekly tests. At times, bunked those tests and went to movies.

13. The lecturers and Heads who asked questions seemed lunatics to us and were our first enemies. When questioned about the number of arrears we had, we lamented that theoritical knowledge is never gonna land us up in good jobs and only learning the concepts mattered more. We never were good in concepts. No one knew this because we never wrote any tests or absconded from question and answer sessions.

14. The adjacent tea shop owner bacame our instant friend when he agreed to give us tea, eateries and stuff on credit. We used to settle accounts at the end of every semester and we spent a lot of bunked days in tea shop reading the local dailies. Politics and Cinema news were the only topics that divided us.

15. Our post lunch session games in class were duet singing, Raja – Raani (all Chennai college and school students will know this game) etc;

After all these things for four years I never believed that everyone from our gang completed the journey on time and passed out as a chemical engineer. It is difficult now to get in touch again with everyone and only the memories like these bind us together. All these trivial and silly things taught me more about life and people. Now looking back on those mistakes, I feel that I never learnt anything related to chemical engineering.

Then why is this post titled Proud to be a Chemical Engineer . Beacuse it is uncool to degrade the degree one studied.

P.S. :- One of our friends from the gang is in Gulf now and we hope he will make it big as a chemical engineer.

Who is he?

Published on January 19, 2007 in click, Just for Jolly, life and people. 5 Comments

Last month, I was there on a short trip to Bangalore at the end of which Sarayu gifted me a good and big coffee mug. Believe me It is big. I say this because it fills up with three tumblers.

Guesses about the cartoon in the mug….

Amma & Gayu – He is a monkey like you.
Sarayu – He is a dog.
I – Isn’t he a lion?
Who is he? Guesses are welcome.

User Agent String Utility version 2 for IE 7.0

Published on January 19, 2007 in how to and Internet. 2 Comments

Scenario :

You have IE 7.0 as the only browser installed in your Windows XP or Vista machine. You are forced to open a website built only for IE 6.0 or earlier versions. You do not have not have options of other browsers. What will you do? Time to apply the brakes? Nah! Read ahead…
Solution :
Relax! You are not the only one who is struck up. Folks at Microsoft thought about this and have released a handy tool for Internet Explorer 7.0 to open a browser window emulating IE 6.0. It is User Agent String Utility version 2. It downloads in a few seconds and installs within a minute.
So, for all those websites coded only for IE 6.0 or earlier can be opened with this small tool. Works fine in Windows vista too.
You need to have a genuine copy of windows for this installation. Oops! Forgot that IE 7.0 does not install in pirated copies. Or did someone already break the rules?

P.S. :- For those of you who really wanted to know how User agent string works. Rest of you, grab the tool and enjoy surfing.

Guru – Hindi Movie review

Published on January 15, 2007 in movie reviews, movies and pastime. 11 Comments

Guru

Movie Name – Guru
Language – Hindi
Cast – Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Mithu Chakraborthy, Madhavan, Vidya Balan and others
Music – A.R.Rehman
Cinematography – Rajeev Menon
Direction – Mani Ratnam
Production – Mani Ratnam’s Madras Talkies

When everyone in the industry is happy to add a line this is a original story or a true story blah-blah-blah, Mani Ratnam is hesitant to do so and in that way, he stands apart from the rest. Iruvar touched the sensitive lines of Karunanidhi and M.G.R., two big wigs of Tamil Nadu politics. Mani Ratnam never accepts that Iruvar is a story of the two stalwarts and goes on to argue that all his movies like Agni Natchaththiram, Alai Payuthey are derived from real stories with a filmy fictional touch added to them. He also goes on to say that when a film is completely made from a life history of a person or people, it becomes a documentary and his job is not to make a documentary.
(Courtesy : Anantha Vikatan)

So, Here is Guru touching the lines of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, India’s biggest industrialists of all times.

Story

Guru (Abhishek Bachchan), the protagonist, hails from Idhar a small village in Idhar goes to work in Turkey for an oil company. Guru makes some money and leaves to India with the dreams of starting his own business. Sujatha (Aishwarya Rai) who happens to be Guru’s friend’s sister tries to elope and is left alone when her bou friend does not turn up. Guru comes to know about the money Sujatha’s dad has saved up for her marriage and strikes a deal with Sujatha’s brother for making him a business partner if he gets married to Sujatha. Guru with his fifteen thousand rupees savings convinces Sujatha’s dad and ties the knot with her. This way, he raises another 25 thousand rupees for his business venture through dowry. Guru, Sujatha and her brother leave to Bombay for their Business venture.
Guru is faced by hurdles while trying to establish business in the license driven Indian business sector. He goes on to oppose the industrial big shots and becomes a member of the Bombay cloth merchants. He goes on to bend and break the rules and builds the Shakthi Parivar.

Guru becomes the Gurubhai of Indian industry.Manik Das Gupta or Naanaji (Mithun Chakraborthy) owns the news paper The independent helps Guru to overcome the bureaucracy in his earlier days of business. Minu (Vidhya Balan) is Naanaji’s grand daughter is affected by multiple sclerosis. Guru and Sujatha strike a good relationship with Naanaji and Minu.Guru raises money with public issues and starts his own group of companies. Guru starts influencing people with money, gifts in his dreams of making Shakthi Parivar India’s biggest company.

In Naanaji’s absence Guru uses The Independent in his favor and throws his arch rivals the Contractor family out in shames. Mithun becomes furious after this and starts fighting with Guru with the help of Sham Mukherjee (Madhavan).

Sham has Guru’s business cut down with his investigative journalism and stops Guru from venturing into new business. One of the companies is shut down on charges of illegal trade. Sham goes on to marry Minu.Guru falls ill and is faced by a commission before the case goes to the court.

Will Guru accept the charges and go to prison or will he get out of those charges pinned against him? The plot unfolds in the climax. That too with a message.

Music

A.R.Rehman lives up as always to the expectations and this being his favorite director’s film, has not failed him. The songs have come out well and one can distinguish the lyrics with music which is harder to do now a days.

Barso Re

A folky number with voice rendered by Shreya Goushal is beautifully captured by Rajeev’s camera and blends with the mood of the movie.

Ay Hairathe , Ek Lo Ek Muft

Ay Hairathe by Hariharan and Alka Yagnik is my favorite in the movie and is very much applauded asit is a simple melody and is played in the background for many scenes.

Ek Lo Ek Muft is another peppy folky number which has Bappi Lahiri and Chitra in the lead and goes well with the movie when Guru and Sujatha give birth to twins. A song written well to emphasise how business minded Guru is. Is that our chinna kuyil (சின்னக் குயில்) Chithra? Still fresh in voice.

Mayya

The first song of the movie which has Malika Sherawat as a belly dancer in a Turkey recreation club. I strongly did not like this song and think could have been avoided.

Apart from these I don’t think any of the other songs had an impact. At least on me, to say. Any Guru watchers have a word on this?

Abhishek Bachchan has done really well throughout the movie with his changed mannerism and his chemistry with Ash has worked out really well. I particularly like his smile and the old looks definitely suits him. He has lived up to the expectations of the audience and at a lot of instances he reminds the big B. One instance is the Ek Lo Ek Muft song where he reminds the big B with his dance. Abhishek can be accepted as a hero in a Mani Ratnam’s movie.

Aishwarya Rai plays the role of Sujatha and does her part very well . Whether in scenes venting her anger against Guru when she comes to know of his intentions of marrying her or in the final court scenes where she supports Guru, has given her 100% best. One thing I noticed about her is that she is one of the best dancers who can swing their hip to the tunes of any kind of music and is too graceful. This we call iduppa odichchi aaduvathu (இடுப்ப ஒடிச்சி ஆடுவது) in Chennai slang. I had noticed this three years ago in Devdas in the Dola Re song. Now she joins my all time elite group of hip breakers like Simran, Urmila.

Mithun and Madhavan have done their part really well and fit in the story. Vidhya Balan does not have a big role to play. She looks pretty and does her part well.

Rajeev Menon is behind the camera and one has to watch the movie to really appreciate the magic touch by him.

Flashes

Conversation between Guru and the Junior Contractor

Contractor : नाम् क्या था तुम्हारा?

Guru : था नहि! है,वो हि रहेगा! गुरु, गुरुकान्त् देसाइ!

Gurubhai addressing the public gathering

एक् सप्ना था,भारत् कि सब्से बडि कम्पनि बन्ने के लिये!

Madhavan proposing his love to Vidhya Balan

As with every other Indian movie, love proposal is not so cinematic and not hyped. Madhavan’s love proposal is beautifully pictured without lengthy dialogues. A sharp scene with rain in the background.

You have a beautiful story of an industrialist in hand, add some filmy fiction masala to it. Top it up with sensitiveness. Have the best in the cinema industry with you. What will you get after cooking the same for a year? Answer is Guru. Mani Ratnam has once again touched a original story after Iruvar with neat direction and faster screenplay. He has proved that he is best at what he does.